f#####g kelloggs
Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:37 am
Actually, not just them but dodgy 'percentage' advertising in general. You know, the kind that has lines like '90% of all housewives prefer Pat Sharpes Deluxe Mullet Wipes' as part of the ad. Because they're simply lies.
The kelloggs one springs to mind, though, hence the title. Children are 9% more attentive at school if they eat cereal like kelloggs for breakfast. Sounds good, yeah? Then you read the small print; firstly, it's eating kelloggs to not eating any breakfast. I.e. children work better if they're not starving. Shocking, eh?
And how do they get this marvellous 9% figure? Parental evaluation. Even worse, the 'no brekky' group is half the size of the Kelloggs group; so any percentage difference can be rounded up nicely. Me, I'm surprised it's only 9%; I'd be pretty f#####g narky if my parents held back my breakfast when I was at school. Of course, it's an arbitrary number measuring an arbitrary quantity based on a placebo effect anyways.
Or the hair/skincare cream with xx% of women noticing an improvement. Well, if you give someone a shitload of free skincare, and then ask them a week later if it helped, what do you expect? 'Thanks for the generosity, but I've not noticed any difference. What, no more?'
Or the insurance adverts that compare their prices to precisely one (unnamed) competitor; probably Fat Bobs Cumbernauld Insurance or some nobody company insuring gangsters.
So why the hell isn't this false advertising? We (in the UK) don't allow the same sort of lies about effectiveness and competitors they do (IIRC) in, say, the US, so why is this allowed? It gets on my tits.
The kelloggs one springs to mind, though, hence the title. Children are 9% more attentive at school if they eat cereal like kelloggs for breakfast. Sounds good, yeah? Then you read the small print; firstly, it's eating kelloggs to not eating any breakfast. I.e. children work better if they're not starving. Shocking, eh?
And how do they get this marvellous 9% figure? Parental evaluation. Even worse, the 'no brekky' group is half the size of the Kelloggs group; so any percentage difference can be rounded up nicely. Me, I'm surprised it's only 9%; I'd be pretty f#####g narky if my parents held back my breakfast when I was at school. Of course, it's an arbitrary number measuring an arbitrary quantity based on a placebo effect anyways.
Or the hair/skincare cream with xx% of women noticing an improvement. Well, if you give someone a shitload of free skincare, and then ask them a week later if it helped, what do you expect? 'Thanks for the generosity, but I've not noticed any difference. What, no more?'
Or the insurance adverts that compare their prices to precisely one (unnamed) competitor; probably Fat Bobs Cumbernauld Insurance or some nobody company insuring gangsters.
So why the hell isn't this false advertising? We (in the UK) don't allow the same sort of lies about effectiveness and competitors they do (IIRC) in, say, the US, so why is this allowed? It gets on my tits.